Archives for June 2011

Design Board

Dining Room Inspiration

It is time for another round of voting for blogger’s design boards in the Apartment Guide Your Picks. Your Place $10,000 sweepstakes! I’m honored to be one of the four featured bloggers, along with Liz from Hoosier Homemade, Shelley from How Does She and Gina Luker!

Have you been voting for the boards every day? Maybe you should set your cell phone alarm to remind yourself because, really friends…I want YOU to win this.

If one of my readers wins I’ll be ECSTATIC!

I WOULD POST YOUR PICTURE, WE’D BE BFF’S!

You could come do a $10,000 makeover of my house!

Oh, OK. Well, no. Not really. I’m just getting carried away here.

You can totally keep the money and shop for you own home. But I do want YOU to WIN!

And the more times you vote, the greater your chances of being the WINNER!

This time for my design board I was asked to put together a French Cottage Dining Room.

I added a little twist with a farmhouse table, bench and some funky metal cafe chairs! I love LOVE love the farmhouse table (it was a virtual splurge but it is AMAZING) and the eclectic mix of chairs and the bench, the silver accessories and the beachy table runner and of course, the fabulous crystal chandelier — LOVE! and I hope you like it too!

Starting at 9:01 ET Thursday, you can VOTE for the newly posted design boards, including my French Cottage dining room! All the resources for where I found my virtual dining room pieces can be found with my design board at Your Picks, Your Place.

The Lowdown:

Is your place in need of a style update? Enter Apartment Guide’s sweepstakes for a chance to win $10,000 to redo your place to fit your personal design style.

From now until August 10, visit YourPicksYourPlace.com to vote for your preferred room design showcasing furniture and home décor items selected by featured bloggers.

The site will feature four different room designs every two weeks. By voting, you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $10,000 grand prize or one of eight $250 weekly prizes to go towards your own selections for your home.

Sound like fun?

You can vote at Your Picks. Your Place every single day between now and August 20th! Set your computer or cell phone alarms! And I’ll be reminding you and showing off my other design boards during the sweepstakes period.

Question: how would you describe your favorite style of decorating?
Do you struggle with finding your style or does it come naturally to you?

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Apartment Guide is owned by Consumer Source, Inc. Apartment Guide partnered with bloggers such as me to participate in its “Your Picks. Your Place.” Sweepstakes. As part of that program, I received compensation. They did not tell me what to select or what to say about my featured design boards, or what to say in my blog posts about the “Your Picks. Your Place.” Sweepstakes. Apartment Guide and Consumer Source believe that consumers and bloggers are free to form their own opinions and share them in their own words. Consumer Source’s policies align with WOMMA Ethics Code, FTC guidelines and social media engagement recommendations.

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Sweepstakes ends at 9:00 PM on 8/10/11, subject to the Entry Periods outline in the Official Rules. Must be a legal resident of the U.S. in the 50 states or Washington, D.C. and 18 years of age or older. Sweepstakes subject to full Official Rules available at www.yourpicksyourplace.com. Void where prohibited.

Decorating Your Bedroom

I look forward to the day I get to really spruce up my bedroom in this house. So far I’ve been too distracted by other projects and my bedroom has not received the attention it deserves.

The master bedroom should be the most significant room in the house, even though it is usually the most private space. I definitely want to devote time and energy towards making our room a place I enjoy being — a place my husband and I can reconnect and retreat to at the end of every day.

I think it is important to have an escape from the world, a place to experience a sense of peace and calm in the home, a room to rest and recharge your energy and of course, a place for reconnecting and dreaming!

The awesome thing about bedroom decorating is everyone can have a different idea of what that “retreat” will look like. There is no right or wrong decorating style for a bedroom! The important thing is that you (and your spouse) LOVE your room, and find it a comfortable escape from the hard work and harsh realities of life!

Q. How do you get started decorating the bedroom of your dreams?

A. Picture a room that would make you feel like you are on a dream vacation.

Here are the first steps in imagining the bedroom of your dreams:

Imagine a hotel that you (and your spouse) think would be the most restful, romantic environment for a weekend getaway. Start by closing your eyes and imagining you are packing your bags right now for the weekend! Where would you LOVE to go? What would the hotel look like?

Would the hotel be quaint and charming? Fancy and frivolous? Would the room be colorful and happy? Peaceful and serene? Would the bed be piled high with fluffy pillows and a down comforter or would it be a sleek modern room with lots of sparkle and glam? Is your dream hotel at the coast? In the city? In a foreign country?

You can take design cues from THAT dream vacation getaway and begin to pull together appropriate elements to recreate a similar feeling in your home (working with what you have and the limitations of your own space and budget, of course!). Make a list of all the key words you came up with from your “dream escape” to help you to keep on track with your favorite design elements.

Start by looking at the inspiration rooms as a whole, then go through each one again, looking specifically at bedding in each photo, the shape and material used for headboards, then look at what is on the walls in each room, how many pillows are used, what combination of fabrics you like best, then focus on the paint colors, what lighting is used, etc. Zeroing in on specifics in a space can help you see how a room is put together and the elements you like.